Three weeks ago our five year old foster daughter returned home to her birthmother. We have spent the 16 months of parenting her developing a strong relationship with her birth family. Not just developing a relationship with her parents, buts aunts, uncles, significant others, and grandparents as well. We worked on building this relationship for several reasons. First, we had parented this child for nearly a year when she was one and two years old. Therefore, we love her, we have known her for most of her life, and she feels like a member of our family. In addition, we adopted... more

How many times have you heard a foster parent complain about their children’s foster care worker? If your state’s foster care system is anything like ours, then probably too often, unfortunately. It has been our experience during 14 years of foster parenting that foster care workers do not stay at their job for very many years. Many are young, fresh out of college, without children of their own, when they start. They are full of ideas about changing the system or making a difference. They are confident in the parenting techniques they have learned at college and expect you to follow.... more

If you have been a foster parent for a few years then you may have noticed that there is a lot of turnover in foster care workers. I understand why, but it doesn’t make it any easier on the children, the foster parents, or the families. Foster care is an incredibly stressful job that really doesn’t pay all that well. I have seen help wanted advertisements for foster care workers, requiring a master’s degree, offering less money than a nurse or an accountant would make with an associate degree. What could possibly be more stressful than knowing a child’s... more

Foster parents rejoice when a new child is placed in their home. With Mother’s Day approaching, a woman might feel especially blessed to have a new child placed in her home. After all, that is why they went through weeks of training and mounds of paperwork. Many foster parents have an ultimate goal of adoption and hope that a child will be able to stay forever. Initially, when a child arrives as an emergency placement no one is sure which direction the case will take. Will the child go home or will parental rights be terminated allowing the child to be adopted. The arrival... more

The numbers of sex offenders continue to grow in our country. It was reported the other day on television that more women are becoming sex offenders. Teachers and other women are having sexual relations with teenage boys.

You may be asking what does this have to do with foster care? In Texas, a mother of two small children (age: 4 and 5) was convicted of sexual assault. She was sentenced to 23 years in prison. The children have been in foster care since August 2006. The biological father is... more

Drugs Impacting the Foster Care System States continue to struggle with the number of foster children in care because of drugs. In Nebraska nearly 2 out of 5 foster children in foster care are there because their biological parents are addicted to methamphetamine. In Georgetown, Texas CPS says that more than half... more

The numbers of children in foster care are continuing to rise in this country because of the effects that “meth” and other drugs have seemed to have on the lives that they touch. Instead of numbers of foster placements involved with drugs getting better they seem to be skyrocketing. With drugs continuing to be a major problem of our society, the picture of foster care continues to become bleaker every day.

I have written about the effect of drugs to the foster care system and the... more

Foster Care: Empathy and Reality (continued)

So, it came to the point, I stop trying to involve them in what was happening in their daughter’s life. What was truly heartbreaking was that they did not ask about her accomplishments or happeings in her life.

I did still have empathy but I also realized that they had to want to change. People have to see the problems to change and the majority of biological parents do not see it. A lot of these parents are living and parenting the only way they know how. Given the opportunity to change for the sake of their children they do not. This... more

In a the blog “Who Pays the Price?” a question was brought up having empathy and understanding for the birth or biological parents that have children in foster care or lost them to the system. The reality of what these children have endured is a lot to deal with for them and the foster parents.

I think there is a difference in empathy for the birth parents and disliking them, than the reality of some foster children’s lives, abuse, lack of concern, abandonment, etc. I believe most foster parents have empathy for the biological parents even when these same people do not show their own children empathy. ... more

Some people think or believe that foster parents are waiting, hoping, praying that the biological parents mess up or choose not to follow their plan to get their children back. If this was the case, then foster parents would not be willing to take foster children short term (2 or 3 weeks) or until kinship placement is worked out.

For the most part, I believe most foster parents do it for the children. Yes, I do know there are a few bad ones that do it for the money. I would think there would be a more involved way to help biological parents with counseling, teaching parenting classes, etc. if that was your goal.

Child welfare's goal is to assist the parents in receiving... more